The Break Up Journal: waiting

July 2, 3 and 4th of The Break Up Journal has been posted this week. And there’s the heavy demand of time to be waited out.

When you choose to not “live in the now” and instead, live in a fantasy of “life will be better once we are together…” you deny yourself a truer, fuller experience of life. You close your eyes to what is happening around you and live in an unreal, shut-off world where others have trouble relating to you, and vice versa. Because, at this time in my life, I was on the edge of love addiction and true freedom from it, it was very hard to be present, yet I was trying. So, you can see the struggle. As hard as I try to get out into the world of Spain and experience it, I’m really only killing time until I can get home. Aside from one day spent wandering through a particular area of the city on my own, looking for vintage shops (which, by the way, I had lost interest in years ago, but was only “into” them again because P was into vintage), my only real joy came in the form of contact with P. That’s all I lived for. Shutters closed to everything else. The waiting game is ultimately a trust game. We tend to wait impatiently when that which we are waiting for may leave us, or may not be ours to possess. There’s an eternal sense of urgency to get back so that you can hold on tighter. It’s a sickening feeling that I don’t know if I get across well enough in these journals.

In current life, D and I just got back Sunday from separate trips. He took his kids out West to see the Grand Canyon, and I went back to Spain with my teenage kids to visit the in-laws and do a little side traveling. Because I have the luxury of knowing that my relationship is safe and secure with D, I am now able to experience travel in a totally new way. My focus is on squeezing everything out of a trip, experiencing everything I possibly can, taking risks, tasting every new food, and ultimately, not wanting the trip to end. What a strange feeling! And something I talked with D about last night. As much as I love him and as much time as we normally spend together, it was odd to be away from him and really, deeply, emotionally, mentally be away. I was free to experience the world without any associated guilt for not occupying all my time thinking about him and wondering what he’s up to. What a new sensation and quite honestly it scared me a bit. Had I wandered too far away from him? Should I have thought about him more, or tried to call more? And don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t thinking or fantasizing about being single or dating another man. I do want to be clear about that. What I was experiencing was a sense of freedom to be myself that I had never really allowed myself to experience before. That freedom scared me. But, at the same time, it was exhilarating.

Eventually, I concluded that as long as I come home and re-establish my typical level of closeness with D it’s all good. And that’s naturally what happened. Living in the now. As soon as we saw each other after ten days, we hugged, kissed and talked and talked and talked. And I was quickly reminded why I love this man so much. He and I are best friends. And when a best friend gives you a sense of safety and security that they are not going anywhere, even when you go out into the world, you ultimately build trust that you can come and go without serious repercussion.

I want to remind you that The Break Up Journal is a story of an unhealthy relationship and to watch out for signs of unhealthy, toxic thinking. Try not to focus on the superficial “love, love, love” stuff that I was imagining. What is boiling under the surface is desperation to be loved and validated, not from within, but from an outside source that, quite frankly, was never worth waiting for in the first place. Oh, hindsight is always 20/20.